According to my OH who’s an early morning soul, on Farming Today this morning, a battery egg producer defended his practices by arguing that hens are from SE Asia and hate the cold, so they’d prefer living 4 hens to a 18″ x 18″ heated cage than to be free range in the snow.
Well, I’ve only been keeping hens for a few months, but that is a complete load of first rate tosh. Our hens live in an unheated shed, with thick woodshavings on the floor. The shed is open all day and they can go in and out as they please. Guess what they prefer?
And we’ve had between 6 and 8 eggs a day from 8 hens all through January – here’s this morning’s production. So productivity at least as good as his, I’m certain.
What is the true is that it takes more land to keep hens free range and we’ve had an mad economic world in which land costs more than fossil fuel, per egg. So it’s cheaper to cram them in and warm their poor almost featherless bodies with oil or gas than to keep hardier varieties, fully feathered and outdoors. But don’t give me the happy battery hen story.
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